It’s Time to Recruit Great Out-of-Town Talent; Here’s How to Do It

Wouldn’t it be great if every perfect job candidate lived right next door to your company? The real world doesn’t work that way. If you are looking to fill a specialized position or want a job candidate with a certain level of expertise, you may have trouble finding it in your company’s back yard. Rather than settle for an under-qualified candidate that will require lots of time-intensive (and expensive) training, consider expanding your recruiting reach.

Many companies shy away from trying to recruit out-of-town talent. It can be difficult to convince a future employee uproot their lives and move. However, the rewards are often worth the tribulations. When you expand your pool of candidates, you’ll have far more and far better prospects to choose from.

Before you start casting your recruiting net to the far reaches of your region (or country, or continent), make sure you can put together an attractive offer the will make great employees willing to come onboard. Here are a few enticing carrots you can use.

Offer a Relocation Package

If you are expecting someone to pack up and move to town to work at your company, you need to make that transition smoother with a relocation package.

Your relocation package should include at least a financial incentive that helps or fully covers the cost of the move. Depending on the seniority of the position you want to fill and how difficult it is to fill that position, you may also want to include:

A financial bonus on top of moving costs

Temporary housing while the employee finds permanent housing

Coverage of home buying and selling costs, such as closing costs, real estate commissions, etc.

Job search assistance for the employee’s spouse

The better your relocation package, the fewer reasons a future great employee can give for why moving would be too difficult.

Play Up the Benefits of Your Area

Before you can sign on a new, out-of-town employee, you’ll have to sell him or her on the area. Every town and city has its own unique charm, so figure out what yours are. If your company is located in a bustling city, you can highlight the great cultural attractions, amazing restaurants, and hopping night life.

Companies in rural areas can gush about the excellent cost of living (which will be highly attractive to city dwellers) and the safe neighborhoods.

Parents are always on the lookout for well-regarded school districts and family-friendly neighborhoods, so if you have these, don’t be shy about talking them up.

Give a Salary Boost

Money talks, especially if it’s more money than the employee was making at his or her previous job. Sometimes the simple solutions are also the most powerful. If you can offer a highly competitive salary, your future employee may be willing to overcome the challenges of uprooting and may feel a lot better about their spouse leaving a comfortable job to move.

If your company is located in an expensive area of the country, it is likely that you’ll have to add some dollar signs to your job offer just so your new employee can keep up with the cost of living.

Offer a Title Promotion

Not every company can afford to shower its new employees with a huge salary bump. If you can’t “make it rain,” then another option is to give your employee a better title. Move a manager up to a director or a director up to a vice president or even into the C-suite.

Giving your employee more power, autonomy, and prestige can be as good as or even better than a financial raise, especially if you can offer an employee a position that represents a true passion. That means you’ll have to be willing to let your employee grow into the position and really take the reins of their department, but with the right candidate, this could be exactly what your company needs.

Give Your Employee Flexibility

If you can’t give an out-of-town employee more money or a better position, there’s one last carrot you can offer. Flexibility. Every employee loves a job that offers a little flexibility, but this benefit is especially important to the growing population of millennial workers.

Consider letting your employee choose when they arrive and leave the office as long as they agree to work a certain total number of hours a week and to be available during a core block of time each day. Employees also love to work remotely, especially if they have a stressful commute. Some of the most innovative companies, like Netflix, GrubHub, and Evernote even offer their employees unlimited sick and vacation days, trusting that their employees will use the freedom wisely.

Think carefully about what you are willing to offer your employee, and don’t forget that if you offer special benefits to one employee, your other employees may ask for the same thing!

Need Help Recruiting Great Out-of-Town Talent?

Stretching your recruiting efforts beyond your city will require more time, effort, and expertise. This may be a big ask if your in-house HR team is already working at capacity. If you’ve never done regional, national, or international recruiting before, consider working with an experienced HR outsourcing firm, like Arch Resources Group. We can save you time and money by helping to identify, qualify, and recruit excellent employees beyond your local city. We can also work closely with your HR team to develop a strong incentive package that will attract high quality candidates to your company.